Sgt. Nikolai Masalov saved a girl's life on April 28, 1945, during the Battle of Berlin. After the war, a statue recording the event was erected in Treptower Park.We heard her voice amid the sound of gunsAs we were advancing on the Reichstag,With Nazi bullets chewing up the bridge's statues and our company's cover. Then, through the smoke, we saw her, a three-year-old German girlcrying out amid the troops, beside her mother's corpse.I was not a bronze man at the timewhen I jumped off that bridge into the river,with Fascists' bullets thrashing up the water around me.I was much uglier than the dapper statueAfter I'd dragged back through the mud and oil of the river SpreeWith the girl in my arms.Many times I've been asked: why.At the time, it was instinct:Rescuing a child was as natural as killing an enemy.Now that both Reich and Soviets have receded like the smoke of battle, I see that succor and corpses aren't equivalent,And that the moment, selfless, remains as bronze:The killer still gun-free, his own salvation in his arms.